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Aw come on it is exciting, it's the NZ Biz Rountrouble afterall. What was awesome was reading how Fran got round the fact that most of the NZBR are offshore most of the time and probably don't either have a stake in nor pay tax in NZ.

On that score I think Key’s declaration today that Shearer or anyone else from Labour won’t be getting on the new “poverty committee” unless Labour promises confidence and supply to his government is a fairly damning illustration of Key’s priorities. I’m quite appalled by it.

Just as I predicted. Shearer re-frames the poverty debate, and Key just looks a bit... petty.

Aw come on it is exciting, it’s the NZ Biz Rountrouble afterall. What was awesome was reading how Fran got round the fact that most of the NZBR are offshore most of the time and probably don’t either have a stake in nor pay tax in NZ.

I think it kind of weird, given that former Carter Holt big cheese Chris Liddell quit the BRT in disgust and jumped ship to the NZ Institute.

I feel inadequate from having little to show for such time spent. But that's capitalist thinking. The new, unemployed me admits that it was a labour of love and that a profit motive would have me writing the worst kind of hack, if I could survive as a writer at all. Most of the writers I'm meeting these days have the dream of the big novel or screenplay endlessly just beyond reach, and a life spent writing fluff pieces for pennies. This is common across most of the creative arts. It's pervaded journalism, and other businesses where artisanry was highly valued.

The most extreme example I meet every week is my sister, a dancer/choreographer, who constantly knocks the socks off the audiences that see her, but can't get 10g of funding to do a show that would employ many other dancers, while millions of dollars are swung towards a dance school specifically geared towards profiting from the labours of dancers. The new owner of this school proudly announced to an entire generation of fresh and (in my sister's highly expert opinion) amazingly talented kids coming out of the Unitec school that she got to teach at for peanuts, that they were at the high point at graduation that their dance careers would ever reach, and they must join her or die. It was quite literally incredible to the audience to hear this, that the Unitec would allow someone to come and tell them that they had learned nothing of any value whatsoever, except how to become slaves to an old hack, long bereft of any artistic vision, when a young and amazingly energetic teacher straight back from dancing all over Europe thought they were awesome, and had motivated them to really put into their art form. The most common word spoken by all the students about that speech was "evil". They sat in silent contemplation of what their student loans had bought them, and were last seen dancing like hip-hop angels as my sister sadly left them, turning her mind to where her own next crumbs would come from.

That's not all that Fran's article skipped over lightly. There are so many deep rifts between the various interests written about that a real well researched article on what National intend to do for NZ business would be, well unacceptable on so many levels.I could also argue that there is so much interference and bad blood between Govt. and trade business interests that there is only one word to describe it...rooted.

I used to sell ads, and made a lot of money. I tried to sell an ad to a holistic healer , who made me realise what holistic means. A care to every part of your existence. A maximisation of your awake hours without feeling tired. Art is movement of electricity in the brain that adds value to the concept of having a brain, ...and unlike work it's fucking amazing to watch.Nice milestone Ben.

So jobs, jobs, jobs, might not actually be the answer we’re looking for at all, even if it has been Labour’s message since they represented even people doing the dirty jobs. It might be that we need an entirely gestalt switch away from seesawing socialist/capitalist thinking.

From each according to their ability, to each according to their need?

More seriously, I think what we actually need is not just the idea of jobs, but of a living. People need the opportunity to find a way to contribute to society, be it in a traditional 9-5 job or otherwise, that lets them live without constant fear that this week will be the week the car breaks down or they have to go to the after-hours or all the kids need new school shoes.

Because you're right, what we accept with the jobs mantra is the idea that what lots of people have now - jobs that barely keep them above water, that don't quite meet their actual basic needs - is enough. Unemployment is bad enough that people's focus is on the unemployed, but it ignores the working poor. And it's all mixed up with the idea of a job as something you're lucky to have, something that's given to you, not something you have a right to - that it's OK to have a system where some people can't find work and then rag on them for their inability to do so.

There's been too many economic crashes in the last 200 years and they always crash on the poor the hardest. Which creates a poordom. We need money into the pockets of every working person. We need everyone getting out of bed every day and in the great words of the frustrated debater,

True. The assumption of corporate welfare remains strong - bribes rather than obligations.

What is required are incentives to galvanise all of our enterprises, public and private sector, to make innovation a core part of their activities right away.

And a fiscally illiterate angle on the purpose of SOE asset sales.

Nevertheless how do the Government's priorities line up compared to what business thinks are most important for growing the economy, and thereby holding onto our standard of living?

There's strong agreement that the ownership of some of our SOEs should be expanded. That's an early priority for both business and the government. From the business perspective it's important because it will help reduce the amount of debt we are incurring - it is like exchanging debt for shares, or equity, in a business while retaining majority control.

And more tired whining about compliance costs in a country that is in fact one of the cheapest and easiest to do business in.

The average Kiwi business shoulders an annual compliance burden equal to $1000 - $3000 for every staff member, wildly excessive on any score for a country like ours so dependent on the competitiveness of a high number of relatively small businesses.

Businesses will be looking to see similar action on local government - the Regulatory Standards Bill applies there too - and changes to the Resource Management Act.

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Our skills development and employment opportunities suffer as a result. Business wants to see policies that will compensate for it. One of them should be a further cut to the company tax rate to help attract investment otherwise deterred by our ETS and its accompanying costs.

Until business cheerleaders like EMA pull their heads from their arses and look to themselves for change, New Zealand's poor productivity will not improve. Other nations will also increasingly not buy our goods and services if we ignore our climate obligations and continue subsidising polluters.

Thanks for doing that, you're right much better with tags. And yes well, with these articles going straight to print from vested interests, we are not well served (well we are well served in a sense ;-)Where are the new blood journalists with objective reporting skills and analysis?

We need money in the pockets of every human being, right down to the newborns. Or society just stops working. That is the inevitable outcome of the jobs, jobs, jobs push - to put work itself as the highest good, rather than the outcome of work, prosperity. As we continually improve how much work each person can do in job, any kind of logic would tell you this should either make society wealthier, or give people more leisure. But if jobs is the focus, improvement is evil, because it takes jobs away. Child-rearing is the same. Artistic creation is valueless. Leisure is for losers. Misery, poverty, depression, war. That's what jobs, jobs, jobs means.

Labour (as others have noted) are broadly committed to current capitalist economics. They're unlikely to be proposing socialist or other ways of managing resources and contributions. "Jobs" is useful enough shorthand for that conventional approach.

Until business cheerleaders like EMA pull their heads from their arses and look to themselves for change, New Zealand’s poor productivity will not improve. Other nations will also increasingly not buy our goods and services if we ignore our climate obligations and continue subsidising polluters.

Were that to come to pass, I suspect the usual suspects will slump even further into denial, and go Tea Party on anyone from 'other nations'. Punch-a-Pom 2.0, much?

As it stands, I liken the cheerleaders to the employer equivalent of the old British Leyland unions.

However science seems to suggest we need x amount of hours in sleep and x amount of hours in social(work) engagement and x amount of hours in leisure time, that's why they built the central park in New York